3G Phone Service in China?

[badr]

Indeed gato,

I just tested that by connecting my Sony Ericsson ( just GPRS, not EDGE) to my mac.. after 15mn of browsing, my mobile was completely out of credit!! !Actually, it was deep in the negative territories ( -25RMB)

ouch!

I'm gonna sign up for China Unicom's CDMA modem thingy tomorrow 800RMB for 6 months of unlimited connection anywhere in China

[roddy]

Ouch - particularly worrying that they let you go into negative territory, you could quite easily run up nasty bills if you didn't realize you had windows update running in the background or something.

/ goes to check his new phone's podcast software isn't automatically updating.

[ipsi()]

It'd technically be 12RMB/minute, but only if you're using the full speed of the connection, and if you're doing that a lot, I'd be pretty surprised. I also reckon you could easily keep it under 2G a month, provided that you're not doing silly things like using it as a replacement for a fixed line internet connection.

But yeah, I also had bad experiences with running into the negatives when I was in China with my 680... . Didn't help that I couldn't understand what the hell the automated voice was saying when I tried to make a call.

And China's still cheaper than NZ, where it's 65￥/MB...

[cdn_in_bj]

China Mobile has started limited public trials of their 3G service (TD-SCDMA protocol) in select cities:

http://www.china.org.cn/business/2008-03/28/content_13793648.htm

[Shadowdh]

Yeah I saw that on the news channel this morning... they were all giddy showing video calls and watching tv on phones... I thought it was more than 8 cities though (although to be honest I was not paying too much attention and only glanced at the box which showed which cities it was going to be in)... cant wait to get to Beijing next week and give it a whirl...

[imron]

cant wait to get to Beijing next week and give it a whirl...

Will you be buying a TD-SCDMA phone just to give it a whirl?

[Shadowdh]

Ah so thats the catch is it, I have a Kaiser/tytnII/VarioIII that does cdma and gsm and 3g, umts, hsdpa etc but will it not work? So its not like the uk where you can pick up 3g where its broadcast then? I thought it might... sigh, showing my technamalogical ignorance again...

[cdn_in_bj]

So its not like the uk where you can pick up 3g where its broadcast then?

Right now they're only testing the home-grown TD-SCDMA standard, so your phone won't work. Wait a year and maybe they'll have W-CDMA in operation here, in which case you might be able to use yours. But even then it'll also depend on which W-CDMA frequencies they settle on.

[ipsi()]

I hope they put up a nice, *globally standard* 3G network, as buying another phone just for the benefits of 3G seems a little harsh.

[imron]

I hope they put up a nice, *globally standard* 3G network

Nope, 3g is even more fragmented than 2g (and 2.5g).

Wait a year and maybe they'll have W-CDMA in operation here

By which time, the rest of the world will be starting on 4g

[gougou]

I hope they put up a nice, *globally standard* 3G network, as buying another phone just for the benefits of 3G seems a little harsh.

According to murphy, even if they put up a standard, your phone wouldn't support it.

[roddy]

This seems about the right place to ask - data services and roaming: Obviously you can make and get calls from your mobile anywhere in China, but is the same true for GPRS / EDGE data? I'd assume it'll let you connect but you'll be charged extra. Anyone know for sure?

[gougou]

Unless there is a delay in deducting charges, on 神州行 it even counts towards your monthly allowance of free megabytes. I only tried this once though (by checking my balance before and after), so that might have been coincidence.

[roddy]

Well, it worked fine. I did notice though that in Beijing I was only getting GPRS a lot of the time, as opposed to EDGE here in Dalian everywhere except a moving bus, and even when I was showing EDGE it seemed slower - I guess there's more contention in Beijing.

[cdn_in_bj]

Well, it worked fine. I did notice though that in Beijing I was only getting GPRS a lot of the time, as opposed to EDGE here in Dalian everywhere except a moving bus, and even when I was showing EDGE it seemed slower - I guess there's more contention in Beijing.

Was there a roaming charge, or were you charged the same rate as back in Dalian?

[roddy]

Trying to figure that out, but the Liaoning Mobile site isn't cooperating, and I've got no idea how much actual data I used - ok, working now.

Does not seem to have distinguished between local and roaming use as far as I can see, and I'm not yet out with my RMB20 set lunch.

Incidentally if you SMS '1' to 10086 you get back a list of instructions you can send to check balance, monthly spending, GPRS usage, etc. I've used 15005714 bytes, which is 14MB give or take, well inside the 50MB my RMB20 gets me. Only use it for text browsing and email though, and will use wireless when it's available.

Pretty good that you don't seem to get charged extra for roaming data use though.

[Shadowdh]

So the 3G works on your touch then Roddy, or am I reading it wrong? if so I should expect it to work on my TyTN II...

[roddy]

No, that's EDGE, 2.5G. You won't get any faster than that, unless you happen to be walking past a test HSDPA base station.

[cdn_in_bj]

Does not seem to have distinguished between local and roaming use as far as I can see, and I'm not yet out with my RMB20 set lunch.

That's great news! Are you with M-Zone or Shenzhouxing?

[roddy]

M-Zone - no particular reason, i just happened to buy my SIM card on a campus, where they only had M-Zone cards. Apparently I get cheaper calls on campus though.